


The Point of It All

by Mr_Dynasty



Series: Points! [7]
Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types
Genre: Advice, F/F, Flashbacks, Lesbian Sex, Marriage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-27
Updated: 2015-07-27
Packaged: 2018-04-11 12:33:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,927
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4435685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mr_Dynasty/pseuds/Mr_Dynasty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Roxie's prepares for the marriage of the century, explains the lessons of lifetime, and relives the struggles of obtaining both.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Point of It All

**Author's Note:**

  * For [PsychicAbsol](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PsychicAbsol/gifts).



> Another one for my dear friend PsychicAbsol. She's truly the greatest. Set after "The Point of Failure", and PsychicAbsols own two wonderful works: "The Point of (no) Return" and "The Point of Commitment." Enjoy!

“I don’t even know why you wanted me to do this.” Lexie complained, when at last she shut off the buzzing hair-trimmer.

Roxie only bobbed her shoulders a bit in a shrug, face unseen as she looked down in front of herself. “Coz I can’t be fucked to sit still long enough to go to the salon, and Sabrina refused to have anyfing to do wiv it.”

“Not that it’s hard to see why.” Lexie frowned. “It is a pretty... drastic change.”

Roxie looked up in the vanity, from the pile of silver tresses laying in the basin. Her long, back-length mane of jagged pale hair was all but gone. All that remained was a high, tight pixie cut. “Change is good, kid. Change keeps you young. It makes the heart strong. Moreover, it’s how I live my life.” She turned, holding up a straight razor. “Fink you can take it down to bare scalp on this side?” her mother asked, gesturing vaguely toward the gauge in her right ear.

Warily, she took the gleaming sharp grooming implement in her hand. “I-I guess so.”

* * *

Roxie stood tall at the dais that had been set to the front of the rented concert hall, like a showpiece. She knew there were times in her life where she felt like she was a sham, that she was taking lucky breaks that didn’t belong to her, that she was getting yet another unearned reprieve from some deserved shunning or outright slap in the mouth.

Roxie was not one of those people who put much stock in keeping her karmic glass filled to the brim. She’d spent the better part of twenty years making a complete and utter ass out of herself, wrecking her body and mind for cheap thrills and two-bit floozies. She’d thought, in those days, that she’d been living life to the fullest, taking every moment like it was her last, and to be honest, having a grand time of it all.

She’d experienced highs--and lows, to be quite honest--that most people couldn't even dream of. She’d been the most famous, awe-inspiring, talented musician of her time. She had known pride, success, fame and fortune almost beyond mere envy, up there on the stage. But there had also been times where she’d found herself to be the most unwanted, detestable, and positively loathsome creature to ever walk the face of Arceus’ green earth. Times where no matter where she turned, she could find no friends, save those that came in bubble-packs and amber bottles.

And then, there had came this woman, who walked slowly toward her. Escorted by her father and invested of all the strength which Roxie now relied upon. Here walked half--more than half--of Roxie’s total resolve. Sabrina, she knew, was what kept her so fully upright today.

This woman was so good to her, Roxie doubted that anyone really deserved her, but she did not contemplate her luck in terms of being deserved or undeserved. Sabrina was the reason she did not think about the past, anymore. She was the reason Roxie didn’t look back on the good times with nostalgia, or the bad times with ruefulness. Sabrina was the reason she didn’t have to look back, at all.

Next to her, next to this moment, none of those old memories could compare. This was not the closing of an old chapter, nor continuation of something that had built to now. That story had closed. That story was told, in it’s entirety. From here, from this second forward, they would write something completely new. Together. The both of them.

* * *

“They’re in town?” Roxie vaulted up off the couch. “What in the ‘ell do you mean, they’re in town?!”

Sabrina looked back at her, from the kitchenette, as though she couldn’t have possibly been misunderstood. “My parents. They’re in town,” she said blithely, a second time, for the benefit of Roxie’s evident impairment.

“I thought your parents were dead!” Roxie stammered.

Sabrina knit her brows. “No,” she muttered. “What gave you that impression?”

Roxie drew a blank. “W-well, I just assumed! You never talk about them! Like, ever! This is literally the first time you’ve ever mentioned them.”

“We lead separate lives. They’re famous psychics. They put on seminars, and travel the world, doing investigative work, expelling spirits, that sort of thing. I simply chose not to use my gift in that way.” Sabrina said, waving one hand over what would soon be dinner, as if the matter were negligible. “It’s not a secret, Roxie. It’s just never been relevant.”

“So do they know?!”

“Know what?”

“--That we’re getting married, for Arceus’ sake!”

Sabrina paused a moment. “I suppose not.”

Roxie grabbed a throw-pillow from the couch and wrenched it in the middle, so that it resembled a piece of licorice. “WHY THE ‘ELL NOT?!?”

Sabrina, now frankly startled, and thoroughly unamused, turned to her fiance, who was clearly a simpleton. “We. Lead. Separate. Lives.”

Roxie hurled the pillow at Sabrina. While it swerved harmlessly to the side just before impact, Sabrina seemed just as annoyed as if it had hit her squarely in the face. “Wot has that got to do wiv’ anything?! It’s kindof important, you know: your daughter getting married! Don’t you at least ‘fink they should get to weigh in with their opinion?!”

Sabrina stood, arms akimbo now, looking terse. “Why? This is my decision, not theirs. Their opinion of it doesn’t concern me.”

Roxie snapped, stomping both heels down hard against the floor after an irate leap into the air. “It bloody well does ME!”

Sabrina’s eyebrows arched severely. “Why?”

Roxie threaded her hands into her hair. “Why? WHY?!? Wot in the ‘ell is going on in that ‘ead of yours? Do you suppose you will ‘ave no opinion of it whatsoeva, when Lexie decides ‘oo SHE wants to spend the rest ov’ ‘er life wiv?”

Sabrina faltered a bit at that, but remained resolute. “Who she chooses is her own bus--”

“I CAN’T EVEN TALK TO YOU RIGHT NOW!” Roxie screamed then, running a small circle, before cutting a path to the door.

“Where are you going?” Sabrina asked cautiously “Dinner is almost done--”

“To meet with your parents, of course, you bleeding moron!” Roxie grumbled, pulling on her leather jacket.

Sabrina blinked. “And then what?”

“And then throw myself on the ground in front of them and beg forgiveness, I should fuckin’ expect!” She explained, before slamming the front door behind herself.

Roxie didn’t have much to go on, she realized as she stomped her bike into motion and pulled out of the drive. She didn’t suppose she knew where to find them after all, being that she hadn’t stuck around to find out that much about it. Still, it stood to reason that she would find them eventually, unless they didn't particularly want to be found. Psychics had that way of appearing wherever they were needed, didn’t they? Either that, or in the case of Sabby, whenever it would get her in precisely the most awkward situations. She had to believe that the same would hold true for her fiance’s family as well.

So it was really no surprise at all, that at as soon as she gave up looking for them, and decided to stop and tie one off at the pub before going home empty-handed, to give Sabrina another good piece of her mind over the matter, when who should she find next to her, but an intense, bearded man, who looked at her out of the corner of piercing eyes, which were not at all unlike Sabrina’s.

She spat a good mouthful of her cocktail right back into it’s glass, rather than swallow it. Out of sudden guilt, or foreknowledge that she would do best to remain sober.

“It’s you!”

The man didn’t so much as bat an eyelash at her. “Who else would I be?”

Roxie frowned. Even the same condescending humor. It had to be him! “Your Sabrina’s dad!”

He turned to face her on the stool, but neither confirmed nor denied, since it seemed superfluous to both of them that he do so. Instead, he tilted his head to one side, questioningly. Roxie wasted no time. She shoved her drink back toward the tending side of the countertop, dismounted, and stood to her full, and rather unintimidating height. “I am going to--”

She frowned a bit deeper, realizing that she didn't quite see eye to eye with him, even while standing and him seated. She amended a bit, courage stifled. “Rather, I want to ask your permission...sir:--”

“You wish to marry,” he interrupted. “We know.” He waved dismissively, which was a very small gesture that had a big impact on Roxie’s confidence, to be honest. She slumped, and went to concede that this was the truth, but he went on. “Sabrina keeps her secrets from us, in ways that, truthfully, only she is able. But all the same, we knew that much. Some secrets don’t stay secret for long. Its why we’ve come home for a while.”

Roxie, acceptingly, nodded. “Well, all the same, I’ve come to ask you for your permission. I didn’t know you were uh...still about, else I’d have made my intentions quite clear prior to now.”

Sabrina’s father crossed his arms then. An Ill omen, Roxie thought. A symbol of impending confrontation. It infuriated her when he asked the same question that Sabrina had, hours earlier. “Why? Sabrina’s decisions are her own. She’s an adult, and a gifted person all in her own right. She doesn’t need our permission to do as she pleases.”

Was this some sort of cultural thing she wasn’t privy to, or just what sociopaths thought was normal? This couldn’t have been an unusual custom, really. If you wanted a girl, a good upstanding, proper girl, you went out and got down on your hands and fuckin’ knees and you begged her sweet old father to let your miserable arse walk away with his bright and beautiful daughter. That was how things went, wasn’t it? Seriously, who the hell were these people?!

“Im not askin’ you because I fink I ‘ave to! I’m askin’ you, because I want you to be supportive of it, not casually disregarding! I don’t want to live wiv’ your daughter under some shadow, or hide it behind secrets and omissions, eh? I’m doin all this--this whole getting married business--because I want the whole bloody world to know, don’t I?! Well, you’re part ov’ that world, like it or not! A big part ov’ it. You should know the whole truth, not just some second-hand version of it! You should be a bloody part of it, coz I don’t want to have to do it in spite of you, either! I would prefer it rather, if I wasn’t just some woman your daughter was shacked up wivv, eh? You should know who you’re gonna be kin to, shouldn’t you?!”

Sabrina’s father only stood there, so she just went on, face scorching.

“When I met Sabrina I was a fuckin’ mess. A waste of bloody skin, I was. I had more problems than I knew what to do wiv. Drug problems, Drink problems, Money problems, Girl problems, you name it, I was up to my fuckin’ eyeballs in it. I didn’t care about a bloody ‘fing but my next hit, and I’d have told you so right to your face, and fuck you if you didn’t like it, eh? I was better off fuckin’ dead. But Sabby didn’t care about all that. She didn’t take me for a fool, or assume that because I was trashing myself that I deserved no better. She took me out of that place, and she did it for no recompense whatsoever. Hell, I made her life miserable while she did it, and the silly girl STILL wouldn’t put me out! Even when I would ditch her altogeva, she would still be right there for me, once I’d gotten low again. No questions asked, no judgement, no fuckin’ spite, she’d just get right back to it. Right back to helping me get straight again...”

She looked up, but Sabrina’s father remained as impassive as stone. “And I didn’t know why, until a very short time ago. I didn’t really understand that she was seeing so much farther down the line that I could, until just recently. Sabrina didn’t see me, as I was then. She didn’t see the filthy, useless me that I was at that time. She wasn’t looking at me, and seeing what was there in front of her. She was seeing me, further on. She was seeing me, as I am, right now, right here in front of you today. She was seeing the me, that I could be, if only she stuck by my side. And so she did it. There’s nuffin’ more to it.”

Roxie started to cry, then, right there in the middle of the pub, not really caring who saw it. “So, the truth, Arceus’ honest truth, is that I’m not asking you for my sake. I was in a bad way before I met her. And if she stepped out of my life, I surely would be again. I may not have the mental abilities that you all do, but there is one thing I know for certain in this world: Some how, some way, I am what makes Sabrina happy. I am what she wants in her life. So I’m not asking you to stand behind this because it’s what makes me happy. I’m asking you to stand behind this, because It’s what makes Sabrina happy.

She clasped both hands together, not looking up. “So please understand: She put a lot of work into me over the years. I’m begging you not to make that all for nothing. Even if you’re not to keen on me, please, at least come to the bloody wedding, awrite?”

She didn’t hear a reply. She didn’t suppose it really provoked one. What she expected, aside from more silence, was perhaps begrudging acceptance, if not incertitude. What she got instead, was something else. She felt two arms embrace her from either side, and her face pressed flat against her future father in laws chest.

Honestly, she didn’t think she’d ever felt so relieved. Still, though, there was one tiny little detail that was maybe best mentioned now:

“Um. Did I mention that we’ve a daughter togeva?”

* * *

She looked away from her bride, for just a moment, to the the man beside her, eyes twinkling in silent accord with her own, at the transaction soon to be made. Daughter, in exchange for trust and understanding. Roxie wasn’t sure she’d ever seen a set of Winter eyes with that much emotion in them, and she wasn’t sure she would again. A stoic lot, Sabrina’s family.

Ma Winter sat beside Lexie, to the left, both looking as pretty as two perfect, dew-covered Pecha berries. She was surprised at how fast the awkwardness between Lexie and her grandmother had vanished. Roxie had made a steadfast convert of Sabrina’s father, but her mother was a somewhat different story. There was still some iciness there, and Roxie supposed that was to be expected, after all. Nobody was good enough for the Mother-In-Law, so it seemed. Still, that hadn’t proved a problem for the most unusual child. Blood of a paradoxical sort was still blood, apparently, and that ran much thicker than water. She felt her grin growing a bit, as she watched Lexie giggle at something whispered in her her ear by her grandmother, which was to say, her smile was now threatening to escape the confines of her face.

Arceus, when had she ever been so happy?

* * *

“So what do you think?” Roxie said, eyes gleaming, as she spread her arms in front of the standing mirror for full effect.

“You look like somebody put a Mankey in a nice tuxedo,” Lexie scoffed.

“Jealousy doesn’t become little girls, you know.” Roxie snorted, as she smoothed her fingers over her lapels, feeling like a lord among mere peasants. The tuxedo was immaculate, almost painfully white, with iridescent satin relief. The cuts were tight, and slim, and the luxuriant fabric screamed proficiency and grace. She’d selected shiny white patent leather boots, white silk cumberbund and white grosgrain bowtie for the accoutrement, but what she felt most pleased with, though, were the suspenders, even though you couldn’t see them under her jacket. They had such a rustic look that it reminded her of home. Not of Virbank, but of her real home, her childhood home, in Almia. Pop had given them to her, as a present.

She fussed once more with the set of her coat-tails, and then spun, satisfied. “You’re real cute in that dress, and all, but the thing is: it takes real skill and execution to crossdress and look good at it. And let me tell you a ‘fing or two, girl: I am killin’ it right now. I make Fiorello Cappucino look like some cheap harlot, by comparison.”

“I still think you look like a maitre ‘d.” Lexie scoffed, but Roxie could tell she was just giving her a hard time. Roxie looked and felt like a million Pokedollars.

“That’s awrite,” she said with a smirk. “It’s just who I am, kiddo.” She held out a cupped hand for her cufflinks, each capped with the circular emblem of the Marsh Badge, which Lexie dropped into her hands with a soft clink. “People can ‘fink what they want, and I don’t ‘ave any problem wiv that. They still love me, either because of it, or in spite of it, so it don’t matter either way.”

Lexie looked considerate, at those words, and said something that honestly caught Roxie off guard. “Is that why you and mum get on so well? Coz you don’t worry about what she thinks?”

Roxie arched a brow. “What your mum thinks?” She laughed. “Sweet’art, if there’s anyone alive who really knows what your mum thinks, I would surely like to meet them.”

Lexie hesitated. “I just mean, like, is it...” She huffed. “Is that why mum likes you so much? Because you...” she spun her hands, end over end. “Because you’re not worried about what anybody thinks?” She stammered. “I-Is that why everybody gets on so well with you, even when they don’t much agree with you?”

Roxie came full stop. “I suppose it is an element of my magnetic charm, yes.” She put her hands in front of her chest, one over the other. “Wot brought this on?”

Lexie blushed. “I dunno, I just...” She lifted one foot, digging the tip of her flat into the floorboard nervously, before remembering that they were new, and setting it back down. She sucked in air, to speak, but Roxie put two fists to her cheeks and squealed.

“Oh, mercy me! Are we about to have a heart-to-heart conversation about the pitfalls of growing up?! Seriously?! You and I?!” Roxie guffawed. “It’s usually Sabrina who gets to have these! Oh, I am so excited right now!” Her body seemed to want to pace in two directions at once, resulting in a cavalcade of steps that went nowhere.

“And you wonder why!” Lexie hissed, with a frown, but before she could protest or march out, Roxie was pulling her by the hand over to the settee by the window.

Roxie plopped down next to her daughter, and made a cup for her chin with both palms. “Tell us everything, then. I am a wealth of reckless teenage advice!” she yelped with a grin.

Lexie didn’t look like that was the kind of advice she wanted. She had always taken after Sabrina in that way, Roxie knew. She wasn’t the ecstatic person that she herself was, at least not in that way. She had always been more somber, less easy to excite. It had made it really bloody difficult for them to have much of a relationship until very recently, in fact. Roxie tamped her cheeky smile into something softer. If she wanted a different kind of advice, Roxie could probably give that just as well. She had, after all, a vast wealth of failure from which she’d learned a great deal. Ostensibly, Sabrina could only offer tips which stemmed from success, something no child could hope to learn a cautionary tale from, aside from the hypothetical. Nothing about Roxie’s teenage years had been hypothetical. Absolutely nothing.

“Mom.” She began, with a slight quaver to her voice. “How do you be...yourself, and still have people enjoy being around you, without being...the version of yourself that everyone wants to see?”

Roxie leaned back considerably. Lexie was beginning this conversation with a real poser, she could see. “Well, kid, here’s the thing: try as you might, you’re really the only you that there is, so you may as well be that person, whomever it turns out to be.”

Lexie looked at her palms. “And who is that, exactly?” she asked quietly.

“Sweetie, it goes without me saying that you are a girl quite unlike any other I’ve ever ‘eard of.” Roxie said, with due temperance. “But that doesn’t type-cast you as anything.”

Lexie scoffed. “Sure it does. People see me as an outsider. People see me as different.”

“And you are, in your way,” Roxie offered. “But that isn’t a box somebody put you in, girl.” Roxie drew a square with her fingers. “The box is where everybody else is.” She pointed to a place just outside the invisible geometric figure she’d sculpted in the air. “You’re right here on the outside of it. Out here there’s a lot of room to run. And it’s all yours, baby, nobody else's.” She made an all-encompassing gesture. “If it seems awkward now, it’s because you’re just now catching your stride.”

Lexie sighed, and Roxie, with a smile, reached out to pick her chin up. “Trust me, Lex. I’ve been out here for a while, now. I put myself outside that box a long time ago. People mistrust you at first, when you’re different from them, that’s true. They look at you, and they want to see something they understand, that feels comfortable and safe, and they would prefer that you played the game by their rules, on their terms. When I first came out, let me tell you, it caused quite the upset. Broke up the whole band for a while, threw my dad into a midlife crisis, and I won’t even get into what else--tumultuous times! Tumultuous, and a bit scandalous if I remember correctly, seeing as how I uh... mistook sexual independence for sexual entrepreneurship, to frame it in terms decent enough for a child’s ears--”

“You fucked around a lot.” Lexie said, not mincing words at all. Seeing as Sabrina was not present to admonish Lexie for coarse language, nor Roxie for allowing it to go unremarked upon, her mother nodded.

If she wanted to be blunt, well, she could phrase it another way, too. “Dahling, that would be putting it rather lightly. I cracked open the thighs of so many girls between ages sixteen and eighteen, that I wouldn’t be pulling your leg if I said I couldn’t get the taste out of my mouth until well into my twenties.”

Lexie blushed, but Roxie elbowed her conspiratorially. “Lets not talk about that in front of your mum, though, eh?” She smiled. “The point is, Lexie, you’re growing into a woman, and that’s nuffin’ to take lightly, but so long as you make your decisions the way you want, without them being an intentional strike at what people expect out of you--because trust me, that way is just as difficult in the end--you’re gonna do fine.”

Lexie half-smirked. “Can’t exactly get away from having two girls for parents, no matter what I do, mom. Don’t really see how I’m gonna rebel against that.”

Roxie shrugged. “You could join a priesthood, I ‘spose.”

Lexie stuck out her tongue. “No thank you.”

Roxie shrugged. “Why would you wanna get away from having two mothers, anyhow? I’m a bloody rockstar, and your mum’s practically omnipotent. Kid, you got the best of all possible worlds, and I ain’t even braggin’ yet!”

Lexie rolled her eyes. “Sometimes I wouldn’t mind if things were less like a circus-act around the house.”

Roxie made a sound like air being let out of a tire. “Psh! What fun would that be?”

Lexie just rolled her eyes again in that teenage way. Roxie smiled and grabbed her daugher by both biceps. “Look, kiddo. All you gotta know, is that no matter what, you’re still our fuckin’ kid, eh? That means that somewhere in you, you’ve got everything I’ve got, and everything your mum’s got, as well. Now, I won't lie to you:” Here, she pointed a precautionary finger at Lexie’s nose. “That’s all the makings for some potentially troublesome life-lessons, in both cases. But you’ve got all the charisma and optimism that Arceus saw fit to bless me wiv’, and all the backbone and force-of-will that Sabrina has on offer as well, which is by no means lacking.”

Lexie’s lips trembled as she went on, but Roxie went on all the same.

“And damned if I know what you’ll do with the gifts you were given, my girl, but you are neither bound nor expected to follow in the footsteps of either of us! Heavens know I love singing wiv’ you, and I’m sure Sabrina is pleased to no end you’ve got the talent she does as well, but for you baby, there are no rules and no limits, aside from those you give yourself!” She pointed out the window. “Every’fing you want in this world, is yours. It’s all out there, ripe for you to pluck it off the vine, luv. Your mum and I have not, and won’t ever carve out a niche for you, and damn it all, you shouldn’t either.”

Lexie nodded, and Roxie could see her cobalt eyes glisten. Those eyes that belonged to her, self-evident and unmistakably.

“We both want you to have every’fing your heart desires, and if we arent bloody well convinced that you’re getting it, you’ve got to know that we’ll turn Mount Silver itself upside down to see that you do...”

Lexie was full-on crying now, but Roxie lifted her daughters gentle face with both hands, until they met eye to eye, and kissed her lovingly on the forehead, before finishing her point. Ultimately, it was the truest thing that could be said to Lexie, progeny that she was, of two very exceptional people:

“But dahling, you could move that mountain wiv’ or wiv’out us.”

* * *

Hearts hammered as Sabrina stepped before her onto the dais, and it was no wonder, really. Sabrina was ravishing in her dress. Positively the picture of femininity, of potent dignity, and ultimately, of beauty that had no rightful place on this earth. She looked like she couldn't possibly be real, standing there, hair a glorious, resplendent plume, face carved of ivory and painted with the earthy tones of fertility and abundant fruitfulness. She looked like some nymph, some creature of legend and portent both magnanimous and terrible. She thought Sabrina looked like a goddess, and so, it made sense that Roxie’s heart hammered the hardest of all present.

She didn’t even hear most of the ceremony over the sound of it ramming the inside of her eardrums with full-force blood-pumping. Tha-thump, tha-thump!

She hadn’t prepared any vows of her own, being that all the stupid things she might have like to have gotten up here and said in front of Arceus and everyone had already been said a thousand thousand times. Sabrina already knew the depth of her feelings on the matter, and it was not liable to bear repeating a thousand and first time, just for the sake of all present.

So needless to say, it shocked her when Sabrina demured from the exchanging of rings, to speak her own. Sabrina was the type to let her actions speak louder than her words, and with how much the Gym Leader leaned upon brevity to get her point across, the gulf between the two was quite large indeed.

They were not at all the typical vows that most brides would have professed, of that, all could be certain. In fact, they were rather more the sort of thing that only Sabrina, or someone very much like her could have hoped to say without sounding certifiably insane, or at the least, a bit demented. The fact that nothing that Sabrina was offering up was insincere, honestly, made Roxie feel weak at the knees.

“You’ve waited a long time, haven’t you?” She asked, rhetorically. “To be standing here.” Roxie couldn’t know for certain, but Sabrina might have been betraying the ghost of a coy smile. “You know I don’t believe in luck. And so I don’t think of myself as lucky, even with things as they are,” She said, simply. “I am here, and that’s nothing to do with fortunes, good or bad. I am here because this is where I chose to be, same as you did. I am here because we took things that seemed absolutely hellbound to fail--our separate lives--and instead we made them lead us exactly where we desired: Each other. Neither of us are victims of circumstance, Roxie. You’re not here because you fell into it. You’re here because I wanted you to be. I’m not here because I am lost. I am here because you found me. Moreover, because you helped me find myself.”

“I knew from the beginning, that once I had you, I would never let you go, so, in a way, all of this?” She cast her gaze about, at the scenery they’d conspired. “It doesn’t have any bearing on how I feel at all.” Instead, she gestured to Roxie, by placing a flat palm on her chest. “Being what I am, it was easy for me to understand that from the very beginning. But, I want to tell you, before all of this is finished:

“You always had me. I always belonged to you, Roxie. Right from the beginning. A ring on my finger, a ring on yours? These are just symbols. They stand for something, they lend credence. But what they stand for, that was already there. When I put this ring on your finger, it will only be to show everyone here something I already knew. When you put that ring on mine, it will only be the same.”

She invited Roxie close, and said the remainder in her ear alone, voice just barely above a whisper.

“I love you, Roxie.” She said, her dusky lips just a few milmeters from the rocker’s earlobe. “I will never, ever give you a chance to stop loving me, in kind.”

Roxie caught her neck on the way out, eyes blurring wildly as she tried not to wobble on her feet. “I wouldn’t stop even if you tried to make me!”

Sabrina only smiled, and didn’t chide her, even though Roxie’s turn to speak had already come and gone, and by now they were only delaying the ceremony with further banter. Normally, she would have said something enigmatic, in the way she was inclined, such as a simple “I know.” but instead, she said something more affirming. It was the spirit of the occasion, after all.

“You’re the only one I would accept.”

There had only ever been one time where she’d feared for her position in Sabrina’s heart, really, and even that had been ultimately a pointless worry. Still, she felt the recollection of that time tickle uncomfortably in her heart, as Sabrina took her ring from the case, and clutched Roxie’s hand, gone clammy.

* * *

She’d sat forever in the parking lot, just hunched there over her bike, after she’d seen it, the undismissable evidence of Sabrina’s forthright interest in another woman.

Roxie had never thought of herself as an intensely jealous woman. A hypocritical woman, perhaps, but not a jealous one.

But, Arceus, of all the people to come sniffing around, why in the hell did it have to be Anabel? She was like, the one other woman in the whole damned region who could even operate on the same level as her girlfriend. A psychic, and ruthlessly intelligent, at that. If it had been a simple competition for Sabrina’s affections, Roxie was sure she could win it, ten out of ten times. When it came to pleasing a woman, there was nobody--but nobody--who could compete with her in the physical realm. She was just that good.

But Anabel, well, she could relate to Sabrina in a way that Roxie herself could never hope to. On that level, Anabel was so far out of her league that it wasn’t even funny. That was a place she could never take their relationship: the sphere of the mind. For all the things she was, Roxie was certainly no psychic. Hell, truth be told, she wasn’t even that intelligent, save for the occasionally well-placed wry comment.

So why, for the love of all that was holy, did it have to be fucking Anabel?

The worst part was that she didn’t even really dislike Anabel! And so the more she thought about, and the harder and harder it got to discount Anabel as a viable threat--being that she had no real ill feelings toward her--the more she believed she really was seeing the beginning of the end. So much so that by the time Sabrina came out to meet with her, she was already screaming with anguish at the fuel-gauges for lack of anything less awkward to focus on in an empty parking lot, while tears coursed heavy and hot down her face.

Roxie still thought of it as a minor miracle that she hadn’t written the end of her relationship right then and there, regardless of Sabrina’s thoughts on fortunes playing any part.

“So, wot then?! Are we done, or are you just coming to tell me to fuck off on home by myself?!” She’d shreiked before Sabrina could even peep a word.

“W-what?” The psychic had gasped.

“Don’t fuckin’ play coy wiv’ me, Sabby!--Just don’t! I’m not a moron, awrite! I saw the way you were behavin’ yourself wiv’ ‘er! I’m not blind, am I? I’m not that bloody stupid! I can tell the difference between a chess-game and pillow talk, so don’t play the wrongfully accused card wiv’ me, eh? I’ve been around the block once or twice now, and I’m no afraid to say so, so just tell me plainly! What’s going on between you and Anabel?!”

Sabrina, at first, seemed like she would keep a level head, and dismiss her out of hand. To this day, Roxie wasn’t sure whether she’d have prefered it that way or not. But the truth of the matter was that both of them had downed a few more drinks than was prudent that night, and so what came out of Sabrina’s mouth bore with it a huge amount of accusation all it’s own.

“Forgive me,” She began in a scathing mockery of apology. “For finding someone who can actually play a decent game of chess the least bit stimulating. I do sometimes wonder how deeply relieving it must be for you to feel mentally engaged by anything with half or less the IQ of an apricorn, but some of us require a bit more, every so often.”

She’d made a strangled retort, she was sure, but nothing so concise as Sabrina’s statement she was sure: The words “some of us” had more than hit the mark, telling her in no uncertain terms that she’d been markedly excluded. Feeling this to be all the more evidence she’d needed, she kicked the stand out from underneath herself, and peeled away, with her teeth grinding, and eyes nearly too flooded to see.

They hadn’t talked again for nearly a week, and even then, only very tersely, which must’ve made life hell for poor Lexie, now that she really thought about it. But in the end, she sort of had Lexie to thank for the turnaround, anyhow, since one day she’d finally gotten tired of it, and out and out confronted Roxie over the situation, out in the garage.

“Mom,” Lexie began, using the normally endearing term like a brusque formality. Sabrina was “Mum” in all but the most dire circumstances, being the respected parent. Roxie was simply “Roxie” until she’d done something that necessitated a bit of professional distance, or buttering up, in which case she got the open-voweled variant of “Mom.”

“Yeah, dahling.”

“What did you do to Mum?”

She could have fucking tipped the water-pipe over she was so bloody mad. What had she done? The bloody nerve! She nearly choked regardless, but she tried to keep an even keel, slowly exhaling her frustrations, along with the smoke. “Did Sabrina send you in ‘ere?”

“She did not.” Lexie scoffed, as though she couldn’t believe she were being accused of being a passive-aggressive component to some greater design than her own. “I just want to know what the deal is! Why are you and mum giving each other the silent treatment?!”

Roxie grumbled. “Your mum thinks I’m an ignorant twat, that’s why.”

Lexie scoffed, and aimed to say something crass, but Roxie held up her hand conclusively. “Look, I know you’re trying to be helpful, Lex, but I don’t really fink I want to hear you tell me how you ‘fink it’s all my fault, just like always.” Roxie had really had it about up to here with this ongoing bias against her. “My troublemaking days are past me, kid. This ain’t my doin’. I’m pissed at your mum, and I’ve every right to be, so drop it.”

Lexie, however, only made an even louder sound of objection. “Don’t treat me like I’m just a kid! ”

Roxie narrowed her eyes, and nearly dismissed her daughter summarily then, with the newest and most stifling of all powers in her repertoire: Parental Authority. But then, she considered, as she really thought about just what it would mean were she to do so, that she really hated self-reinforcing authority in all it’s forms, and could no more bring herself to use it against her daughter than she could see allowing it to be used on herself. Instead, she settled for a small sigh, and a big gulp of alcohol from her glass at the bar, before resigning herself to letting Lexie say her piece. “Tell me then, oh, wisest of all tweens: What great piece of advice have you on offer?” she drawled sarcastically as she came across the garage room, spinning a stool into place so that she could straddle it and leer at Lexie for being so cross with her.

Lexie neither retreated, nor amended. “You’re fighting over something, that much is obvious.”

“Such deep insight!” Roxie snarked, face all frowns and rolling eyes. “How did you ever get so relationship-savvy, kid?”

Lexie snarled, ignoring her mother’s asininity for the few moments required to get her point across. “At least I know that when I’m upset with someone, the last thing I should be doing is getting even by refusing to let them fix the problem.”

“Refusing?!” Roxie barked! “I ain’t seen ‘ide nor fuckin’ ‘air of Sabrina today, nor yesterday! So don’t you bloody tell me she’s been tryina fix the problem, and I ain’t been lettin’ that ‘appen!”

Lexie stamped her feet. “Well, I sure don’t see you looking for her!”

Roxie scoffed. “Me? I’m the one with the bloody grievances, kid!” She rubbed the bridge of her nose. “Why aren't you giving Sabrina this speech, anyhow, instead of me?!” She raised her glass to her face again, with fatigue.

Lexie, the obstinate little thing that she was, marched straight over and took it from her. She sat in confusion for a moment, wondering if ever in the history of parenthood, a child had ever been allowed to so thoroughly undermine her parents and walk away without a stinging backside. She prepared her best approximation of a scolding tone, but Lexie beat her sorely to the punch. “I already did!”

The look on Lexie’s face then said that she’d received the same blow off from Sabrina, only likely in much more concise and tactfully worded terms. “But I’m counting on you, as the more affable one, to actually do the talking!”

Roxie sat stiff for a moment, and tried to make it seem like she was surprised at Lexie’s assessment of her, rather than the fact that she was trying to remember what affable meant.

“It means--”

“I know what it means!”

“Then please, come out of the garage, and say whatever needs to be said!” Lexie shook her head. “You know as well as I do that mum barely knows how to get across that she’s upset, much less formulate an apology. I doubt she’s ever apologized in her whole life! She’s not avoiding you because she’s spiteful, she’s avoiding you because she doesn’t know what to say! If you just go out there and say you’re sorry--”

“I shouldn’t have to apologize. I didn’t do any--”

“Whatever!” Lexie shrieked. “Sometimes I have to do things I don’t like! You don’t see me moping around in my room, because it isn’t fair! If you just go out there and start talking, it doesn’t matter what you say! So what if it starts another argument, it’ll still be better than not talking at all, won’t it?!”

Roxie stammered, but ultimately came up empty. Lexie, feeling her chastisement fully delivered, stormed out, and left her there to her thoughts. Which was fine with Roxie really, because there were plenty of them for her to consider. She thought long and hard about them, in succession, until she was sure her head would burst. When she finally stood up to come out of the garage, a small part of her wondered if Lexie hadn’t meant to use the word gullible instead of affable.

She still felt angry when she came out, and so it was no small wonder that she’d worked herself into a blind fury by the time she came upon Sabrina in the kitchenette.

She hissed to a boil, much like the kettle that Sabrina was tending, in full willful ignorance of her presence.

She had never before in all her years together with the woman, gotten handy with Sabrina in quite the way as she did that moment. After all, it was death to put your hands on someone like Sabrina in a way they didn’t appreciate. And she was rough about it, too, by Arceus.

She grabbed Sabrina’s elbow with such a fierceness as she thought she’d likely never even show her bass guitar, and revolved her so that she was facing her head-on. “I wanna talk to you. Outside. Right. Bloody. Now.” She pointed out onto the back porch, like the reaper come to guide away the soul of the reluctant dead.

Sabrina, bless her heart, didn’t immediately crush all the bones in her arm for her, the way she might’ve some lesser being. Instead, she allowed herself to be carted out through the glass door, and didn’t even make a big show of things when Roxie let her go with an irritated twist of the wrist. She just took a few steps to slow herself down, and then turned to face her captor.

Roxie didn’t know what to say at first, at least not conciously. Fortunately for her, her wounded heart sent several things bubbling up to the surface incoherently, which she yelled at Sabrina in terms that were strictly unintelligible. There were times where her accent was so thick that even her father, so conditioned to the Unovan tongue barely understood her, and this, she expected, would have been one of those times, so she doubted Sabrina understood a word of it.

“I’m tired of this bit, Sabby! I am, sod all! But instead of sussin’ out what’s what, we spend the whole damned time not sayin’ owt, and now the whole naff situation’s really gone the khazi, and here I am, bein’ told off sumfin bloody awful, for not puttin’ paid to it right off! Cor blimey, but I am brassed to deaf wiv you right now! Proper brassed!” she finished, tapering off from what couldn’t have possibly been understood by a true Kantonese, save with included subtitles.

She tried to calm herself down, but it didn’t do much good, so instead, she tried to just say what was on her mind!

“Why in the hell are you so bloody interested in Anabel all a’sudden?”

Sabrina, brows narrowing, opened her mouth to answer, but Roxie cut across her before she could. “No! Shut up!” She hissed. She was afraid to hear an answer to that, for fear it would be something deeper than what she already knew. She liked Anabel because she was good company--proper company for an intelligent woman. Roxie knew that.

And that was probably the reason such truth was propelled out her mouth as what she said next:

“I don’t like the fact that there’s somebody else ‘oo can give you what I can’t”

“Roxie--”

“NO, I said! Shut your gob until I’m finished!” Roxie screamed. “I don’t like it that Anabel is smart enough to treat you properly, where I can’t! I don’t fuckin’ like that you like it so much, either!” She shook her hands about wildly. “She’s smarter than I am, more cultured, probably goes wivvout sayin’ that she’s no slouch on a chessboard, either.”

She pointed accusingly. “And seein’ you wiv her, and seein’ you smile and carry on the way you were just made me feel like fuckin’ mud. You knew it too, or you wouldn’t have made that cheeky-arse comment you did in the parking lot, after I confronted you about it!”

Roxie gnashed her teeth. “If it’s petty and insecure, and stupid to feel that way, well then it just goes to show you the kind of person I am, luv! I’m not perfect, and I ain’t ever gonna be, but there’s just certain things that piss me off, and that’s one of them. I don’t bloody like to be shown up, at something I’m committed to!”

“See, I can love you like nobody else! I can rock your world like none other on this earth, and that’s my tried and true gift, Sabby. That is my one skill! You could walk away from me right now, and never again find someone else who can do what I do to you. I could live out the rest of my days in the cold comfort that you’d never find another person who can treat your body the way it deserves to be treated!”

“But that ain’t all this relationship is built on, is it!? There is other stuff to it as well. There would have to be, wouldn’t there? A person needs to feel wholly appreciated, I get that. Not just physically, but emotionally, and intellectually as well! Well, while I may be confident about the first one, I am quite aware that I struggle with the other two, so it shouldn’t come as any surprise to you that I am quite put out to see myself so thoroughly outclassed, that you would look for it elsewhere! I guess maybe a kinder, less envious soul than me might not begrudge you your satisfactions, but unfortunately you fell in with a really black-hearted woman when you got together with me, and I won’t fuckin’ stand for it, awrite? It just hurts me, and I don’t care for it!”

“Roxie!”

“Oi! Belt it up! I’m not done, yet!”

“Now, I know I am never going to be your match in brains. I could kid myself, and pretend I was going to dedicate myself to the intellectual pursuits, but where would I be, even then? Only condescended to, as a matter of course. My best efforts would only amount to childsplay, in your frame of understanding. I wasn’t born with your ability, or your capacity. I’m just never going to be up there with you mentally. I’m just not. And like I said, I suppose the polite thing to do would be to acknowledge my failure, and not concern myself with how you manage to feel appreciated in that regard.

“But I cant. I’m not polite. In fact, I’m very impolite. I’m downright rude, and I never learned how to share, and I absolutely refuse to start now. I don’t want you to go somewhere else to get what you deserve, even though you deserve it!” She snarled. “I don’t want anybody to ‘ave any part of you that I can’t ‘ave! I don’t want anyone to give you something I can’t provide better than they can, either! Maybe that’s a bitch thing to do, but so wot? I’m a bitch! I’m a total and utter bitch, and that’s childish and unfair, and I know it, but I can’t stop myself from feeling this way.”

“Roxie, I--”

Roxie who had run out of polite ways to tell her fiancee to shut her fucking yap, just screamed until she was silent.

“I’m stupid, awrite! I’ve bloody said it once, I’ve said it a million fucking times: You’re smarter than I am, you’ve got every bloody reason to be. You’ve spent your whole fuckin’ life making your brain into miraculous wonder to the world, ‘aven’t you!? Meanwhile, I’ve spent my whole life burnin up half of the brain cells I once ‘ad, and that weren’t much to be begin wiv’, trust me. So, the way I see it, I’ve only got one other thing I can do to keep you ‘appy, and that’s the emotional bit, isn’t it? Now, I know we’ve not always met eye to eye: you being the more quiet type, and me being the more rash and outgoing! Wiv’ you being psychic and all, but I’d sortof taken this comfort in thinking that most of what I ought to have said might as well not be. You already knew it by default, right?

“Well, I see now that that was stupid, and naive! Or, at least, I must at this point believe so, since the alternative is that telling you has no bloody point, and I am hopelessly lacking the materials required to ever fully satisfy you, and never will! The truth is, I ‘fink I could really be good at the emotional part, if only I could just sit down and get it all out! Only I’d never tried before! I never needed to, with you! But by Arceus, we are going to sit down right now, and so ‘elp me, I am going to tell you such a story as I have never told anyone on this earth, not even my own bloody father, and you are going to hear every last bit of it, and either know that I am giving you every’fing I have to give, and be thereby satisfied by me and me alone, or you are going to hear me gasp out the last fuckin’ breath of my life-story, a wasted woman, before you leave.”

She pointed to a seat at the patio table. “Sit down, shut up, and listen to me.”

Sabrina did, wide-eyed. And so she told the story, as promised. She told Sabrina everything, all the way back, from newest to oldest. She told Sabrina all the things she’d heard, and all the things that she knew from just simply being a mind-reader. She told Roxie stories from when she was in the old band, and her first crush, and her Dad’s assignment to Unova. All the way back. And she didn’t spart the details, either. She told every secret, and exposed every lie, and gave up every pretense, laying it all bare. The sun, which had been only just risen, when she began, had begun to set, now, and during the whole course of things, Sabrina had only listened. She’d known most of it, but not interrupting Roxie had said it all, aloud, for the sake of having said it.

But then, she went on: She went into uncharted waters, where Sabrina had never seen, and where lied the biggest, and most injurious secret of her life.

She told Sabrina about what it was like, growing up on a Tauros ranch in the Almian outback, where the sun was so hot and summer lasted all year long. Where the scorching days saw her freckled back exposed to the scant wind as desperate hope for comfort against the heat. How her mother had always scolded her through the bedroom window where she always lay, when she would catch Roxie with her overalls unbuttoned and pushed down to her waist, wiping sweat from beneath breasts that had never truly budded with her linen shirt, bundled in her hands like a dishrag. How she would always stick her tongue out--and further--how she always regretted doing so, even now.

How she had never regarded her mother overmuch, seeing her as a nuisance, and tiresome. How, being that she was bedridden, and sickly with tuberculosis, Roxie had never stocked much in her mother, aside from being a source of complaints and chores to accomplish. And how she’d let that gulf stop her from being there at her mother’s side when the end had come...

“I wish I had been better to her.” Roxie sniffed. “I still think about that, all the time. What it must’ve been like, to die alone in a house, while her ‘usband was out at sea, wiv only a seven-year-old daughter ‘oo’d never listened to her, and didn’t love her enough, and ‘oo was too bloody scared to come in the room while she gasped and wheezed and arched her back off the bed trying to take a breath that just wouldn’t come, even though it were her own mum.”

She told Sabrina how she knew she wasn’t to blame for it, and how she could no more have pressed back the inevitable by going in the room, but that she regretted not holding her mother’s hand, at least. “It was a sad way to die. I was so ashamed of myself that I never told anyone. I just told pop she must ‘ave passed in the night; that I’d found her that way,” she admitted in a little tiny voice that hardly sounded like the Roxie that Sabrina knew, at all.

That must have been why the psychic had reached out and taken her hand in her own, in the darkness of night, while Roxie cried out a few tears for ancient history.

All the same, Roxie disentangled herself from the gesture when she was done, still finding it in herself to be mad.

“I didn’t tell you all that, so you would feel sorry for me! I told you because...” She floundered a bit, once she’d batted her lover’s hand aside, but then stiffened as she caught Sabrina’s sanguine eyes staring into her own. “I told you because I don’t want to leave anything unsaid so far as you and I go! I know I take a lot of shit for granted, because I’m lucky enough to be with someone who knows most of what’s going to come out of my mouth without me ‘aving to say it, but damn it all, Sometimes I need to say it! And sometimes, you need to hear me say it! That’s what having an emotional connection is about, right!?”

Sabrina looked at her questioningly, as though she wasn’t quite sure if, even after nine hours of total silence she was now being called on to comment.

“Speak.” Roxie instructed, with an aggravated wave.

She did, and it was a very brief thing that she said, by comparison, but in that regard, she must’ve had a great deal of time to sit and consider it while Roxie told her own story. “I am not interested in being with anyone but you. I don’t care what they have. I drank too much, and I was having a nice time with Anabel, but I never meant for that to hurt your feelings. What I said in the parking lot was...reactionary.”

Roxie flattened her brows. “You said I could be mentally stimulated by half an apricorn’s wit.”

Sabrina blinked. “And it was also harsh,” she added provisionally. “But you don’t need to do anything to keep me happy. I am happy, Roxie. If I wasn’t I would let you know.”

Sabrina offered, what might have seemed like a pittance coming from anyone else, but was as good an admission of fault as Roxie had ever heard her utter. “And maybe that’s my doing. I know I’m not very vocal about how I feel, most of the time, either, so how could you know one way or another? You’re not psychic like I am.”

Sabrina’s was surprised to find herself blushing, as she went on. “Can I tell you the truth?”

With Roxie’s nod of consent she continued.

“Sometimes, when we’re together, you make me forget that. Your touch, the way you hold me, and the way you always know what to do. It’s always perfect. Sometimes you know what I want before I know. And so I don’t always remember that you can’t tell what’s going on in my head. Sometimes I forget that I need to speak my mind, just as much or more as you do.”

Sabrina smiled as Roxie, unbidden, snaked a hand under the table and brushed the inside of her knee.

“Like right now?” The rocker asked, all too eager to find some way to gratify her need to feel close to Sabrina again, as soon as possible, using the strongest means available.

“Like right now.” Sabrina said, her voice taking on a husky quality. She slouched a bit in her patio chair, so that Roxie could better reach the part they both wanted her to touch.

“Then speak your mind.”

Sabrina bit her lip at first, but then gasped when Roxie’s expert fingers brushed under the hemn of her skirt. “I haven’t had you in two weeks, and it aches without you.”

Roxie smirked. “That’s what I like to hear.”

Both of them lost in each other, and their feelings of relief coupled with the sudden and giddy excitement of mutual forgiveness, still did not fail to notice Lexie’s sudden “Eep!” of panic from the sliding glass doorway where she’d been eavesdropping for most of the evening, hidden away behind the bunched drapes. “Gross!” she complained, as she skittered off.

Neither Roxie nor Sabrina let that minor interruption stop them, however.

* * *

Roxie kissed Sabrina so desperately when their rings were firmly affixed that she might’ve thought she was about to pass on, right then and there: That the moment her lips parted, she would collapse to the floor, and never get up again, totally and utterly spent.

She did swoon a bit, back bowing as Sabrina held on to her, and all the happiness and giddy excitement nearly brought her to a stone-cold fainting spell. It was finally done.

She positively could not wait for the first person who expressed skepticism about her relationship with Sabby, now. “That belongs to me now, mate!” she would say. “I’ve got the paperwork what proves it!”

She looked outward, then, down all the congregated guests, but her gaze did not linger long, even on Ash in his darling little zebrstrika-print tube dress, because truthfully, she only had eyes for Sabrina. And Sabrina, she was satisfied to find, only had eyes for her.

When the psychic embraced her yet again, even though they were already being pelted with rice, she was not want to refuse her kiss.

* * *

“So how is the Championship treatin’ you, mate?” Roxie asked, offhandedly, when they’d met at the cafe a few weeks prior. Ash had outright refused to meet at the pub, and so she’d settled for moccachino where gin and juice ought to have sufficed. “‘’Eard your little girlfriend was just appointed your first elite! Gave the finger to ol’ Lance, and everyfin’. How saucy!”

Ash just shrugged, and didn’t comment one way or another. Responsibilities, she supposed, were weighing heavy on his heart. Wasn’t every day a young man seized control of regional power, and then was left to his own devices as to how he should build it up from the ruins that political by-play had left it in.

She elbowed him across the table. “Stick ‘wiv it, stick wiv it!”

Ash just sighed, and took a long drink of his sugar-sweetened tea. “Yes, well,” he offered, but said no more.

Roxie pursed her lips. “Yanno, I remember a time--”

Ash interjected abruptly, cutting her off. “This isnt another dick-story, is it?”

She held up her hands, placatingly. “No dicks, promise.”

Ash looked skeptical. Roxie’s stories, in his memory, always ended in some uncalled-for analogy.

“Okay, hardly any dicks, let us say.” She made an X shape over her chest. “Cross my ‘eart.”

He sighed. “Go ahead.” Best to get it over with, he reasoned.

“I were going to say, I remember a time when I were under a quite a bit of pressure: When Lexie was born, yeah? I barrelled into it, full speed at first, but I guess when the time came to actually saddle-up and take responsibility, I sortof...” Roxie rolled her hands over, as if physically reeling the stubborn point out of her mouth. “Well, I didn’t know what to do but run from it. So I did run. I actually ran away.” She leaned over the table. “I weren’t even there when my kid was born, yanno? It were a shit ‘fing to do.”

Ash frowned. “Oh, this is a great story, Roxie. I feel so much better, thank you,” he groaned, voice dripping with sarcasm.

“Lemme finish, eh!?” Roxie gasped. “Like i said: It were a shit ‘fing to, and I felt like shit for just that reason. But I was given my chance to make good on it, and I did the best I could. It ain’t prefect, ‘ell, sometimes it isn’t even normal. But the fact is, I was brave enough to come back ‘ome, and thank Arceus I did, eh? Now I’ve got a ‘ole family, and my life is bloody great. It ain’t what it used to be, for sure, but it ain’t bad. I know what it’s like to feel like you’re being bloody strangled, when everyfing seems turned upside down. You’re sitting there like you’re trapped, and you don’t know how to get back to the way things used to be, coz everyfing is moving way too fast, and you don’t recognize your life anymore. I do, mate. I understand that, quite well, in fact.”

Ash took another slow drink of his tea, eyes questioning. “So what’s the secret?”

Roxie shurgged. “It ‘elps ‘aving someone who won’t let you quit. But there’s only one secret to success in all cases, Ash, and that’s sticking wiv’ it, like I said. When I saw Sabrina standing there, about ready to pop open, my ‘ole bloodly life flashed before my eyes. I knew everyfing was about to change and I didn’t want that to ‘appen. I liked things quite well just ‘ow they were, didn’t I? Too bloody right, I did. I ‘ad the perfect girl, the perfect lifestyle, no fuckin’ responsibilites to anyone but myself and Sabby, and I knew right then that all that was about to crash to a stop, an’ I didn’t know ‘ow in the ‘ell to ‘andle what was coming next. That’s why I booked it, savvy?” She paused, and shook her head. “But that was wrong. I can’t do it differently, now, of course, but looking back, I know that even though I was ‘orrified, I should have stood there and taken what was coming full in the face.”

She snorted. “Coming full in the face, eh? Eh?! See what I did there?” She cupped both hands under her chin as if to catch some spilled liquid. “Told you, it’s only ‘alf a dick story!”

Ash, who’d been half-heartedly interested, flattened his eyebrows. “You’re a real inspiration, Roxie.”

“I know, right?” Roxie flexed her arm a bit, as if the quality were a physical one. “Look, all I mean is, if ‘fings are puttin’ you in a vice, right now, it’s best to just bear it, and see what comes. Don’t dread it, coz then you’re always looking for ways to change the situation. Just accept it, and do the best you can. Times like these, it’s not the situation that needs changing, mate. If my life has taught me anything--” she smirked. “Aside from a wealth of inappropriate anecdotes, that is-- It’s that you can’t always change the world, mate. Sometimes, you just gotta let it change you.”

Ash rolled his tongue around a bit inside his mouth, contemplating. Whether it was her words, or the flavor of his tea, she was hardly certain. But, when he did comment, it was simply to say: “Alright.”

She guessed she could live with that, but she couldn’t help but to irritate him a bit further. “Like I said, though, it ‘elps to have someone in your life who won’t let you back down. Like me an’ Sabby. How are you and your girlfriend getting along?”

Ash balked. “She’s my Elite. Not my girlfriend.”

“Oooh, a workplace romance! How scandalous. Do spill!”

Ash’s frown deeped. “We’re not together. There’s nothing to spill. She defends my title, and that’s all.”

“Like a knight defending the chastity of his fair maiden, no doubt.”

“We. Are. Not. Together.”

Roxie pretended to pout. “And ‘ere I was ‘oping you’d bring her as your plus one.”

Ash blinked. “Plus one to what?”

Roxie smiled widely, and lifted the hand she’d kept covertly in her jacket pocket this whole time. Her engagement ring gleamed like an extension of her smile. “To my wedding, of course.”

Ash whistled. “...Wow.”

Roxie snorted again. “Wot, I don’t strike you as the marrying type? Trust me, mate, when you find one as good as this, you don’t muck about, you nail her fuckin’ feet to the floor just the moment she stands still long enough for you to do it.”

Ash shook his head, with a chuckle. “It’s not that, I just...I dunno, I’m surprised I merited an invitation.” He hadn’t exactly kept a close accord with Roxie since their first meeting. They still bumped into one another sporadically, but, there wasn’t really much to go on, otherwise.

Roxie, however, gasped loudly. “Come off it, mate! You’re a bloody guest of honor! I’d have never even met Sabby wivout you!”

Ash opened his mouth to protest, but then smiled warmly. “I...I guess that’s true, in a way.”

Roxie stood up, polishing of the last of her drink. “Now come on.”

“Where?” Ash asked, still feeling quite good about himself, for a moment. That all ended however, when Roxie explained her intent.

“Over to the Drink-Drank. We’ve got to pick you out a nice dress to wear, being the maid of honor, and all!”

* * *

Things progressed quite nicely from there, as Roxie imagined it. She managed at least to get down off the stage without her knees buckling. It was easy, really, since Sabrina was linked fast to her arm, and refused to let go, as they coalesced with with those gathered.

There were a lot of faces there, some brightly smiling, others less so. Holly, for one, lingered toward the back of the crowd, his face downcast into his phone, frustratedly, as he was stymied yet again by some emulated game or another, and paid no attention to the world around him either out of distaste or disinterest. It was a very Holiday thing to do, so she didn’t find herself irritated by it. He’d been known to cause more disruption, and she could be glad of that much at least.

Doc malingered by the entryway, as if unsure of how to proceed. He hadn’t even sat down during the ceremony, which Roxie supposed was understandable. He played the role of awkward friend of a friend--or in Holiday’s case, “frenemy”--invited to a wedding as Holiday’s plus one. She would be needing to antagonize the two of them whereupon it was in hideously poor taste to have their first real date at the wedding of an associate, a bit later.

Cynthia, who was troublesome in another sort of way, flashed in front of them almost immediately, claiming the whole of their attention. Roxie still had weird feelings about Cynthia from time to time, and the reason was that, as Roxie and Sabrina’s relationship had become more full-blown, there had been...certain insinuations. Nothing too untoward, and nothing outright in the open, but Roxie knew how to read signals of sexual availability unlike any other. When she’d made her own implications, to affirm that her and Sabrina were in fact, in an exclusive and committed relationship, well...that was the most uncomfortable part really:

Cynthia didn’t mind being a third wheel. And if she was reading it right--and Roxie didn’t doubt at all that she was--Sabrina might not have minded either. Cynthia was, after all, a peak specimen: gloriously beautiful, imminently cultured and possessed of fame and dignity which neither of the two of them could really say they were of a match. Who wouldn’t condescend to a fling with a person of Champion Cynthia’s caliber?

Still, she’d balked, more out of fear than anything. She couldn’t get on with that sort of thing anymore. A matter between friends was one thing, but when it intersected with something as deadly serious as she was about herself and Sabrina, well... Suffice to say that no risk, no matter how great it’s potential outcome--and great it most certainly would have been--was worth losing what she had now.

“I’m so happy for you both!” Cynthia said, hand to breast and fanning her face. Irritatingly, she was one of those people who was possessed of so much poise that even when she cried she didn’t really cry. It was like the trembling moisture on her lashes was physically chained down. It could bubble to the corners of her slate-colored eyes, but not a millimeter farther. The fact that her smile radiated so easily, and was not at all drawn by heavier emotion, the way some other’s might, made it seem eerily controlled. Perhaps, Roxie considered, when she thought about it, even patently falsified.

Roxie tried not to be made to feel uncomfortable by that thought, and just forced herself to grin at Cynthia’s congratulations. It got a lot easier when Sabrina, quite uncharacteristically from herself, leaned and gave her a peck on the cheek at Cynthia’s provocation.

Which wasn’t to say that all of their wedding guests were so easy...

* * *

Sabrina folded her arms quietly as they sat together in the dinette. “I understand why you feel that,” she professed. “I just don’t understand why you would want them there on your wedding day.” After a moment, she corrected herself. “Our wedding day.” The reminder was a clear indication that she did not want them there either.

Still, Roxie crossed her own arms, resolute and unbudging. “You mean besides rubbing it in both their smug fuckin’ faces that my life is going just fine wiv’out them in it, I suppose.”

“Yes. Besides that.”

Roxie gave a sort of half-shrug. “Because I don’t feel like I need to shut that part of my life out, just because I’m done wiv’ it.” Realizing that didn’t quite make sense, she amended. “Look, when you come across a great big pile of shit, you don’t shovel more shit into it just because that's where all the shit goes.”

Realizing, at the confused look Sabrina was giving her, that her fiance must have had next to no experience in mending burnt bridges, she decided to be less abstract with her explaination. “I don’t ‘fink it would do at all for me to shut them out. It would only make ‘fings worse. They don’t like me, and I am bloody well no fans of theirs either. But the fact is, they’re here whether I like it or not. I can’t go the whole rest of my life without bumping into them--”

Sabrina was slowly adopting that hellish look she sometimes got, so Roxie thought it best to clear the air right that second. “I don’t want you scaring them away, Sabby.”

“I’m not going to scare them.”

“I don’t want you doing worse than that, either.”

Sabrina frowned, facetiously. “What kind of monster do you take me f--”

Roxie shook her head, to plainly state that a question with a thousand answers was being asked. “Let’s not mince words: Please do not kill any of the wedding guests.”

“I--”

“Nor leave them in vegetative states, or tamper with their childhood memories, so that they’ve sudden irrational fears, or any of the other nasty things you’re no doubt capable of doing!” Roxie stamped her foot under the table. “I mean it. Let’s just get along for one day, and ignore the slights, and let bygones be bygones. Who knows, it might even help things in the long run. And it certainly can’t do it any harm. And even if it does, I’m sure to get some satisfaction out of it.”

Sabrina very nearly looked like she was about to pout. “But why on our Wedding Day? Can’t you just invite them over to a house-party or something?”

Roxie shook her head. “No. I’ve waited my whole life to have this one perfect, wholesome moment of satisfaction, and out of all the people in my life, I’d most like to shove that right down Billy’s throat, thank you very much. I want her to see me up there, having the time of my fuckin’ life, and know that it’s got absolutely fuck-all to do wiv’ ‘er.”

Sabrina gave the obvious logic counter: “But if you’re inviting her just to see you get married to someone else, isn’t it at least a little bit about her?”

Roxie smiled, having prepared for it. “No. It’s about me. And it’s about you. I want Arceus and everyone to see how bloody proud I am of what I’ve got, and she doesn’t earn herself a reprieve from that, just on account of how she burned me. Honestly, I feel like I’d be giving her more credit than she deserves if I didn’t invite her just on account of what a ‘ore she is, and that would tell her plainly that she’s still under my skin.” Roxie smirked. “Well, she’s not. I don’t want her there to show her what she missed out on, Sabby--she and I could never ‘ave had what you and I do! I want her there to show her that she can’t ignore how fuckin’ ‘appy I am. I want her there, so that she can see what true fuckin’ love looks like. I want her there, because I don’t wan’t to miss out of getting to see how inadequate she looks next to us. That chapter of my life is closed, baby. It’s high time I fuckin’ slammed the book shut for her, as well. I’m ‘oping that it will do the lousy bitch a world of good, really. And worst case, I’m still intending to get a great deal of satisfaction out of watching her squirm, while she’s forced to sit there and act polite.”

Sabrina sighed. “I have my doubts.”

Roxie smiled. “As do I, dahling. But, It’s nothing we ‘avent ‘andled before, though, is it?”

* * *

Roxie perhaps hadn’t expected the antagonism to be so straightforward.

With regard to Danny, his simple fear of Sabrina hadn’t made him much of an issue. Hell, after an interloper had gotten inside the concert hall, somehow, and began snapping pictures of the two of them for who knew what purpose, Sabrina’s reaction had completely unnerved him to the point that he stayed well out of their hair for the remainder of the reception, looking quite displeased, of course, just as he had for the duration.

The both of them had just stood there, for a while, as the uninvited guest whom neither of them knew, and both knew quite well was no wedding photographer, wondering exactly what to do about him, and growing more irritated by the second. Roxie hadn’t particularly wished for any violence during this most singularly special occasion, but the best explanation she could come up with for this paparazzo shoving his camera in their faces, was that this was some plot of Billy’s. That, or this was some agent of Lance’s, which honesty would have done even more to piss off Sabrina were it actually the case.

So she supposed she couldn’t be that put out that Sabrina had very quickly thereafter put a light measure of psychic energy to work in blowing the man’s camera apart from the inside. Cellulose and silver halide film were very flammable, after all, so the little nudge of energy that it took to get a fire going was no great feat, for Sabrina, even when there was no real source of heat, and the film itself was safely ensconced behind crystalline lenses and plastic, in the case of the camera.

The offending device all but exploded, and the scant bit that didn’t promptly melted, spreading licking flame down the trespassers clothing, who stumbled and panicked all the way out of the concert hall in a vain attempt to put himself out.

They’d cleared up the distress caused by the disruption by serving cake and refreshments immediately thereafter, at Sabrina’s suggestion. A masterful save, Roxie thought, and not only because the cake was devine--as literally everyone commented in very short order--but because it assuaged the sudden mood of shock quite adequately. She had to remember that Sabrina was almost as good at influencing the feelings of others as she was at defending herself from scrutiny: a necessary combination of skills for someone like her.

She smiled as she cut her own piece last, a matching pair to the first piece which she’d cut, for Sabrina. No, rather, for her wife, Roxie thought, with a giggle. For her Wife!

Still, neither the disruption of a man being badly burned, nor the soothing effect of the cake and champagne dissuaded Roxie’s most potent antagonist from making an even greater ass of herself when the time came.

It didn’t come immediately, as Roxie had plenty of time to find a secluded seat, where her and Sabrina could sit in eachothers company, and laboriously fill two dainty champagne flutes that from the enormous bottle that Nicky had sent as his regrets and regards for not being able to attend.

It was shortly after she had, regretfully, returned the bottle to the ice-bucket on the catering table, that Billy made her appearance. Regretfully, because the bottle would have made an excellent blunt object with which to beat Billy’s brains out. But still, she reminded herself, that was not at all the spirit of this occasion, and so she tried to let herself calm down before she reacted, to the loud, grating annoyance of Billy dragging a chair a great distance across the floor, to bring it alongside their table for two.

“Hey!” she griped unnecessarily, as though she needed to do more to catch their attention. Her breath smelled powerfully like ethanol. Obviously, not having had enough, nor enough time to be drunk yet with the refreshments in attendance, Roxie imagined this must have been resultant of the hip flask protruding from her front pocket. “Hey, you two!” Billy yelled, even though she was practically leaning over the table.

As they’d planned, neither one of them responded harshly. Sabrina looked awfully perturbed, though, and so Roxie stuck her hand out across the table to overlap Sabrina’s which was clasped and white-knuckled. She was glad to find it’s grip slackening under her palm. When she felt suitably placid herself, she turned her head slightly to look at their third table-member.

“This was such a beautiful ceremony.” Billy hiccuped. “Shame they wasted it on you two freakjobs.”

Roxie only smiled. “I’m glad you were here to see it.”

“I’ll just bet you were.” Billy snarked, rapping her hands on the table. “Hoping to make me jealous, no doubt.”

Roxie didn’t even bother to snort derisively. “What is there to be jealous ov’, dahling? There’s nothing ‘ere you you would honestly want, is there?” She glanced between herself and Sabrina in a convincing display of honest curiosity. “Just us two weirdos, eh?”

Billy seemed put out, briefly, which satisfied her to no end. “Oh, I see. This is where you turn over a new leaf, huh? Crazy-ass, no-account Roxie, finally gets her act together, is that it?” She jabbed the tabletop as if pinning the point in place for all to see. She looked at Sabrina. “You know this bitch is a top-class liar, on top of being a junkie, right? She used to steal money from her Dad to get high while we weren’t on on tour, coz she would always blow all her share before we got home! Thats the kind of person you wanna raise a family with?”

Sabrina glared, at first, but then softened at Roxie’s insistent look. “Accepting people’s flaws is part of loving them. Helping to mend them is the other.”

“Yeah, right.” Billy scoffed, waving her hands dismissively in Sabrina’s face, before turning back to Roxie. “Your life together is joke, bitch. It’s an unfunny joke and you know it.”

It was Sabrina who retorted, rather than Roxie herself, however. “Our life may not be quite as glamorous is yours, I’ll grant you,” she said scathingly. “Being a world-class Psychic and a Gym-Leader isn’t what it’s cracked up to be. Godlike power, prestige in a respected field? Who needs that?”

Roxie chimed in right alongside her. “And also, I’m not exactly able to bring down venues like you. I doubt I’ve the stage presence to pull off the saturday night gig at the hot-dog eating contest. I mean, wow! Mostly they just have me play in sold-out arenas, or headline at music festivals, lame-ass shit like that. It’s hard out here for a girls like us, yanno.”

Both Roxie and Sabrina laughed at one another. “But, at least we have something to fall back on if this doesn’t work out.”

Billy looked even more put out than before. “Real cute,” she snarled. “But it doesn’t change the fact that this is all make-believe.” She pointed accusatorially at Roxie. “You’re still the same fucked up little girl you always were, and you think that by getting together with some other broken, fucked up person means you two will fit together like puzzle-pieces, and you’re wrong.”

Roxie burst into a wide, and slightly malicious grin. “It’s not that, exactly, but then, you’re not entirely mistaken, either. S’more like: I was that person you're talking about several years ago. And I suppose, more or less was the case with Sabby. But it isn’t that we’re two ‘alf-people holding eachov’er togeva, Billy. We grew. Out of one another, we got just the things we needed, that’s true, but this never would have went anywhere if we’d remained codependant. That’s also what a relationship is about--I mean, not that you would know, but I’m only telling you.”

Billy rolled her eyes, “The only person in this room I feel sorrier for than you two, is your kid.”

Sabrina stiffened, humor erased, but Roxie, even though she was just as insulted, kept herself calm. “Is that so? I mean, aside from the fact that she’s got everything in the world, and her whole life ahead of her, why is that exactly?”

Billy smiled insidiously. “Well, It’s like I told you before: I know you didn’t get much that amounts to a decent education, Roxie, but two girls don’t make kids together. Which means that somewhere along the way, Wifey here went out got herself knocked up, and convinced your grumpig-ignorant ass that it was yours. Probably your old man, if she had any brains. He seems lonely enough in that little house of hi--”

Roxie was surprised then, as Sabrina was the first to leap forward. It made sense, she guessed, since it was her integrity being impugned upon at least as much as Roxie’s own intelligence, it just struck her as odd that Sabrina would resort to something physical, being that she was a psychic and all. Before Roxie could protest though, she’d taken up her plate of cake, and crushed it into Billy’s sneering face, smearing clumps of hazelnut cake and buttercream frosting from eyes to chin.

When Billy flinched away drunkenly, Roxie seized her hard by the arm to forestall an outburst, and pulled her tightly inward, so that she could hiss in her ear. “Now look, bitch, you seem to have some trouble reading between the lines, so for the sake of all that cum stuck between your ears that seems to be clogging your hearing, aside from serving as a brain, let me make our point clear: Nobody here gives a fuck about what you think. You’d do best to find someplace to piss off to well out of mine and my blushing bride’s sight, before you make us do something really coarse, eh?”

Sabrina, taking her other arm, and pulling her likewise, so that the intoxicated guitarist was nearly pinned helplessly to the table, snarled in a low voice. “Also, it would be best that you bear in mind, that when we let you go, to slink back to whatever dark corner you came out of, that if you so much as consider slithering your way anywhere near our daughter, on your way there...”

Sabrina let the threat die quietly. Roxie however, did not, quite in spite of her earlier protests against such things.

“...There will be a funeral in the middle of this wedding.”

Roxie clasped Sabrina’s hand tightly as they watched Billy stumble away, wiping cake and angry tears from her face. Sabrina seemed satisfied enough, and Roxie knew she’d have been better off not wasting any more time thinking about her former best friend at all. But still, she couldn’t stop herself from wondering how things had gone so wrong. She remembered much simpler, better times, with Billy, and it tugged at her heart to see that so turned upside down.

* * *

“So what! We’ve got a gig! A real gig, too! An International gig! Not some cheap cafe job! They want us to play at a music festival in Oreburgh! We’re gonna open for the headliner! That’s huge!” Billy grinned from ear to ear. “There’s gonna be big names up there, besides: Banjiras! Pelipper! Sunny Day! Forretress! This is it, Roxie! We’ve hit the big times!”

Roxie, who had professed excitement before Nicky had left their powwow on account of pressing matters elsewhere, had cooled somewhat. “Yeah, but...”

“Yeah but, nothing! Koffing and the Toxics are about to shoot through the stratosphere, man! You can’t just sit this out! We’re not Koffing and the Toxics without you!” Billy’s eyebrows laid flat for a second. “I mean, you’re literally bringing both the Koffing, the Toxic part to the table.”

Roxie struggled not to let her giddiness show. “Yeah, but the League says they can’t find a replacement for me.”

“I’m not surprised, with the way they’ve treated you.”

Roxie shook her head. “Look, all that’s done with, it’s just--”

Billy gasped, slamming backward against the seat in the van. “Done with? Roxie, they were literally using you to do their dirty work! You weren’t even a proper gym-leader, for a while! You were more like a fucking child assassin!”

Roxie shook her head more fiercely. “It’s over now.”

Billy scoffed. “When is it ever over, with them?”

“You wouldn’t understand. You weren’t there!” Roxie said, looking out the window, even though she was yelling. “They killed our friend, Billy. It were more personal than you think. I didn’t do what I did coz I loved it, or because I was made to! I did what I did, because it was the right fing to do. The only fing left to do!”

Billy was quiet for a while, and didn’t say anything, evidently knowing she’d upset Roxie. And for a long time, she didn’t say anything either, content to see something on the outside of the van that wasn’t really there. That was, until Billy reached out and grabbed her hand, threading fingers through it. “Look, Rox. I’m your friend. I’m your best friend. And you’re mine. And I’m right here, right now, telling you that this is our time to shine. Here, there’s just more of the same, and there always will be. The same basement gym, the same fucking league who’ll only call on you when they’ve got a job too nasty to do themselves, and the same tired, boring ass shit-shows that will never do anything to take your mind off any of it.”

Roxie looked at her and Billy’s hands, painted red nails spliced through painted blue ones. She sighed.

“I know you.” Billy went on. “And I may not have been there with you, when you were away doing leauge business, but I see it in your face, Rox. You need to get away from this shit. You need to put it behind you. And how are you ever going to do that, if you don’t fuckin let go?”

Roxie felt hot emotion bubble into her throat, choking her. “I dunno.” she groaned.

Billy clenched her hand tighter, and used it to pull her across the gap between the front seats, so that she could embrace Roxie around the shoulders. Roxie just cried for a while, like she usually did, and Billy obliged, as they both leaned out of their seats hugging one another. “Its gonna be okay, Rox. You’ll see. It’ll be better than okay. You and me, and Nick? We’re gonna travel the whole fucking world! By the time we’re through, this will all just be a blip on the radar.”

Honestly, Roxie didn’t know for sure if she ever wanted to be through. She didn’t care about Unova. This wasn’t her home. She was a Navy brat, and besides, all this stupid, backwards country had ever given her was more greif. She was only here because pop was stationed here! Just thinking about it made her feel even more miserable.

“Just say you’ll come with us, Rox. I promise I’ll help you through it! Together we’re gonna turn the world on it’s ear! I won’t let us fail! Just say you’ll give it a shot, and I’ll handle the rest. Fuck the gym, fuck the League, fuck everything else. Just us. Just you and me. Forever.”

Roxie bawled, even harder. It had become more difficult since the Plasma ordeal to stop crying once she started, and now was no different, so they sat in the van for a long time, until she could tell their exaggerated pose was making Billy’s back ache. She’d collected herself enough when they finally sat back upright again, to tell the truth. “Awrite. I’ll call Grimsley in the morning. Tell him I’m shutting down the Gym, I guess.”

Billy, bolstered by success, jabbed a finger. “--And fuck him if he doesn’t like it!”

Roxie nodded, sniffing. She felt like she was gonna cry again, so she bit her lip. “Can...Can you give me another one of those wellbutrin?” The bass-player asked, gesturing timidly to the glove compartment. “It made me feel a lot better yesterday, I just...”

Billy smiled, toothily. “Yeah, man. Sure!” She dug in the dash and produced a bag of small white and black tablets, from which she produced two, one for Roxie, and one for herself. “This will fix you right up!”

They downed them together with smiles, Billy’s exuberant, Roxie’s half-hearted and timid, and sat in satisfaction for a while, before burning up the late night hours together out on the town.

That was the night that everything had taken on a whole new light to Roxie, where the horrors of the year previous had vanished, and all the untold glory of her late teens and early twenties still laid before her. The night where she’d realized she’d have followed Billy anywhere, and beyond, and the night where two teenage girls, unbound and unwound, made mischief on their last night in Unova like it was their last night on Earth.

Things had been right, then. And perfect, she’d thought. It was still many years before the spoiled wreckage Billy--and admittedly, she herself--would make of her life, and it was still many years more before she realized that it had never been perfect at all. That it had been just what Billy herself was describing when she’d spoken of her marriage to Sabrina: two broken people, trying to fit together like puzzle pieces.

* * *

Roxie knew she shouldn’t have been frowning, she should have been grinning from ear to ear, but, she just couldn’t help it. Sabrina didn’t need to see her face to know that she was troubled, and so, with her chin tucked over Sabrina’s shoulder (a considerable effort at her height) Roxie was no more hiding it than if she were grimacing nose to nose with her.

“I’m sorry things didn’t go how you wanted with Billy.”

Roxie shook her head, and tried not to let that effect her already hampered ability to step in time. Luckily, Sabrina was keeping the pace fairly slow, for her sake. “Oh, don’t even mention that cunt’s name.”

Sabrina might have laughed a little, then, but it was hard to tell, concentrating as she was. “I know you were trying to clear the air, more or less. In your own way.”

Roxie grunted. “Yeah. Guess I kinda lost my temper there at the end, though. Cocked things up pretty badly.”

“No more than me.”

Roxie shrugged, “Aw, sorry I let her muck things up, for _you_ , luv. She’s a skeleton out of _my_ closet. Shouldn’t have let her come. You were right. Like always.”

Sabrina gave her own shrug, making Roxie’s jaw bounce softly. “You tried. That’s worth something.”

Roxie snorted. “Yeah. Worth about dick, so far as Billy is concerned.”

Sabrina did laugh this time, Roxie was sure of it. “You’re still a better woman than I am.”

Roxie couldn’t help but giggle. “Dahling, if I’m a better woman than you are, I should say plainly that I do not have high hopes for this venture.”

She could feel Sabrina’s cheek move against her neck as she smiled. “Oh, I do.” She turned, and planted a warm kiss under Roxie’s ear. “I have a lot of high hopes. Most of them pinned on this evening.”

Roxie felt her blood course, intensely. “Well, I suppose maybe I can hold faith in those hopes, at least.” She offered, letting her hands slide low indeed down the back of Sabrina’s gossamer dress. She glanced around. They’d been dancing for so long, and so quietly that almost all of the guests had excused themselves on their own behalf.

Sabrina smirked, “Now that I think about it...” Sabrina began, as her parents, the last of the wedding guests, nodded their intent to depart. “Lexie is already with the sitter, and we’ve got this place till eleven ‘o'clock.” Her parents seemed quite surprised that she waved goodbye to them, but then, she was newly married, and in quite the rare mood.

Roxie felt herself turning red. Not out of embarrassment, but rather out of excitement. “Yeah?”

Sabrina broke off from the embrace, with a snap-step suddenly, grasping Roxie’s arm. Roxie, too stunned to react, was shocked to be spun in a perfect spiral, and whipped into a low dip, stacked leather sole failing to find purchase on the dance floor as she slid neatly beside Sabrina who bowed over her, one arm under her, and the other clasping hands tightly. Quite the debonair move, actually. Even Roxie, familiar as she was with the art of impressing a lady, was a bit awestruck by it. It was something she might just as soon have done herself, had she been keeping her mind in the proper place while they’d been dancing. “Been taking a few pages from my book, huh?”

“I learn from the best. And I learn quickly.” Sabrina commented, confident that they were at last, alone.

“That’s the 'fing about you, innit.” Roxie said, not quite willing to be outdone. “Always gotta keep one-upping myself, don’t I?”

“While we’re on the subject: the thing with the garter-belt earlier was a bit over the top.” Sabrina said, in a way that might have been indicator that she was about to drop Roxie flat on her back. Still, her expression didn’t say as much

“Well, where I come from, you dont just throw the bouquet. The garter goes too.”

Sabrina pulled her back upright again. Her tone was still annoyed, but again, her face didn’t read as that. “You could of said something before you threw my skirt up in front of everyone.”

Instead of dropping her, Roxie was pleased when Sabrina gently brought her down to her back at the full extension of her arm. Roxie propped herself on her elbows. “It’s customary. Besides, when Holly caught the bouquet, I knew I had to launch the garter straight at Ash.”

Sabrina made a face, down at her. “Yes, well. I was aiming elsewhere, I just didn’t expect your friend to throw quite so many elbows to get to it.”

Roxie sniggered. “Holly is competitive, whatever else. The less a 'fing matters, the more competitive he gets, actually.”

Sabrina, returning to her point, pressed it. “Either way, you could have warned me.”

Roxie, suspecting that there was something more to it, tilted her head aside, questioningly. “Hiding something?”

“Well, not something, per se...” Sabrina agreed. “Rather, an absence of something.”

Roxie grinned vigorously. “Oh-ho! No knickers? How risque!” Not at all unamused, Roxie made a tidy beckoning motion, as she lay there. “Let us see.”

It was Sabrina’s turn to smirk, as she took one exaggerated step over Roxie’s torso, and then another short quick-step so that she had one heel planted to either side of her throat. As she slowly--almost painfully slowly--bundled her skirts, over knee and thigh, and both pearly stockings, one missing it’s lace garter, and the shadows that obscured what hovered above her face, Roxie could see that there was more too it than just that.

Sabrina was wearing undergarments, after a fashion, but it was really more like, she was wearing the suggestion of, or just the hemming of an undergarment. Three slender ribbons of lace formed a triangle where knickers should have been, but with nothing between them, they were really more the suggestion of themselves, than anything. All of Sabrina was fully exposed, outlined in white trimming.

“I see what you mean now.” Roxie admitted.

“You nearly gave everyone an eyeful.”

“What a shame that would have been.” Roxie said, sardonically.

Sabrina pouted. “I only want _you_ to see it.”

Roxie chuckled deviously at that. “So lemme _see_ it.”

Sabrina looked uncertain, as if her earlier boldness had run its length, and now she were back to being simply regular Sabrina again. “Maybe we should go into the photobooth.” At least there she could draw the curtain. There was nobody here, she knew, but suddenly the wide open floor seemed embarrassing.

She went to take a step, and adjust, but Roxie caught both of her ankles, tightly. “No, no, no. Right how you are. Right where you are. Right _now_.”

The psychic bit her lip, but when Roxie flicked her tongue, enticingly, the metallic ball on the pad of her tongue clinking against wicked grin, Sabrina knew she wouldn’t put up any argument worth hearing. Because, quite honestly, she didn’t have one. She bent her knees slowly, eased downward, and it was only seconds before she found herself gasping and clutching huge handfuls or Roxie’s hair, both to keep her own voice restrained, and also, to do anything she could to keep Roxie’s mouth from stopping what it did so fucking well.

“I love you so much.” she gasped.

Roxie, responding likewise, did so in a murmur.

* * *

“Pop, how do you know when you’ve found the one?” she remembered asking her father some months ago, before she’d finally had the notion to propose.

His answer, though succinct, had been all the confirmation she’d really needed. “ When you’ve found someone who doesn’t want a _different_ you, and so, you want them to have the _best_ you. You know, if you find yourself more wanting to change yourself for them, than finding them wanting to change you for themselves.”

She’d known she had that in Sabrina. More than anyone had ever had that in anybody else.

**~Fin.**


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